The Mysterious Wheel

 

Hullo!! We are still poking around the river estuary and found a huge pile of concrete... maybe from an old foundation. All beary mysterious but... there is more!

We found this!!! Can you see us??? We are soooo tiny because the wheel is so huge!

Massive...

But what is it?? Well... we did some research and... it might be a docking dolphin... it might just be some scrap metal that someone wanted to recycle some day... or it might be related to coal mining or a cement plant... all beary mysterious.

See! Here we are... there is all sorts of graffiti on this thing.

Waves...

And zen trees.

Over here... there are still more ruins!

With crumpled steel beams and concrete.

Maybe a loading area... because there is a hill up to the right and things could have been tipped into trucks from there...

How the wheel fits into all this is a mystery!

See... hill... with stairway to nowhere.

There's the marsh again...

And somebody carved their name into this concrete curb... Marlin in June...

June of 1973.... So that's almost 40 years ago... No... wait... 50 years ago!!

This sure is a pretty area...

We did some research when we got home... and found some stuff on Reddit and Facebook...

Sooo... let's see... the hydro line trail used to actually be a railway back in the coal mining era 100 years ago. It ran along the river, past those 4 house foundations, across the river to the Reserve Mine. The coal was put on the train and then shipped out from the estuary dock area.... those pilings we saw in the river when we first got to this place. Those 4 foundations were related to the coal mine... maybe offices? Or manager housing?

The pics from this blog post are likely from the cement plant that has been shut down for 50 years or so. Back in the 60s, there was a cement silo and chute with a conveyor belt from the barge dock to the top of the silo. So that could be the dock area too that we saw. According to one Reddit user, the steel wheel was salvage that the guy who used to own the property picked up from somewhere. 

But... according to the campsite owners near here... the area had been a concrete plant (we figured that out), a pile driving/barge manufacturing plant (oooh... interesting), and a storage lot for a company that built docking structures.  The big wheel was a remnant of a docking structure called a dolphin.  If you look at many BC Ferries terminals, you’ll see them. Turned on their side, these wheels are the frame to hold concrete and timbers to help hold ferries in place at dock, while they load and unload vehicles.

Huh... go figure... we think it might be the think in the middle of the bottom of the picture...

Filled in with pilings and concrete and stuff... interesting...

Sooo... quite the historical wander on our adventure! Coal mining era 100 years ago... and then cement plant with dock. And then a pile driving/barge manufacturing plant! But that still doesn't explain the rock carving... Although, the campground had this to say... "We’re not sure about that, but it’s more recent."